Alternative to Goferd; Katello-Host-Tools and Remote Execution

Environment

• Satellite 6.x

Issue

• Goferd is known to cause memory leaks, and collectively consumes large amounts of resources. Is there an alternative to goferd to manage content hosts?

Resolution

• As of Satellite 6.3, the katello-host-tools package and the Remote Execution (REX) offer an alternative to the goferd client service. The goferd service currently provides two services:

Goferd Responsibilities:
1. Report currently installed packages and erratas to Satellite for content hosts
2. Install packages on content hosts based on events driven by Satellite

• The katello-host-tools is a yum plugin that will report the currently installed packages of a content hosts during each yum transaction. This will cut down on cpu and memory consumption, as the yum plugin is only active during yum transactions.
• The REX feature of Satellite allows users to configure content hosts via ssh connections (Ansible and regular ssh). Allowing users to update packages and configure content hosts. The diffrence is the REX option is pushing the updates to the clients, while goferd is pulling the updates from Satellite. The goferd method will have more points of failure, and overall more consumption of services, as each client will need to have this service running. With REX, this can be handled from the Satellite or Capsule servers, thus having fewer points of failures.
• Please see our official documentation for more information regarding Host Management without Goferd and Katello-Agent

For more KB articles/solutions related to Red Hat Satellite 6.x Remote Execution Issues, please refer to the Red Hat Satellite Consolidated Troubleshooting Article for Red Hat Satellite 6.x Remote Execution Issues

Diagnostic Steps

• The package katello-agent is the package responsible for goferd. Running this command on your system rpm -qa | grep katello-agent will confirm if it is installed on your system locally

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